The Missing

The First World War ended the day Sam Simoneaux's regiment reached France, but he saw more than enough of its ravages. Returning to New Orleans, he determines to put mayhem and destruction behind him, and to make a frest start with his wife. But when a little girl is abducted on his watch at a department store, he has no choice but to help find her. Sam takes a guard job on the Mississippi steamboat that her parents work on as musicians, hoping to unearth clues somewhere along the river. As the boat heads upstream and calls in at ever more lawless settlements, offering excursions with dancing and jazz to its rowdy customers, Sam enforces tolerable behaviour on board. It is ashore the danger lies, where he makes a discovery that not only threatens everyone involved but casts new light on the murder of his own family decades earlier. Steeped in the langorous rhythms and music of Prohibition Louisiana, The Missing vividly evokes a ragged frontier nation where violence is normal and the law easy to dodge. But Sam Simoneaux knows right from wrong, and what it means to lose a child. Relentlessly suspenseful and profoundly affecting, this is an enthralling tale of vengeance, conscience and redemption by an exceptional writer.